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The United States of Leland 6/10 is a teenage crime/drama from 2003 starring Ryan Gosling (my reason for watching it), Don Cheadle and Kevin Spacey. At the start a heinous crime is done but not seen and much of the story is told in flashback as Leland (Gosling) recounts events to a teacher (Cheadle) in his detention centre. A whole host of other figures including his father (Spacey) are involved but don't seem to have any bearing on what happens. This is a very confusing film yet it isn't at all compelling. By the end I didn't really care why the guy had done what he did, which seemed to be the point. Gosling seems to be going for quite a soporific, Donnie Darko-inspired performance here and because of it his character's utterly inscrutable, but not in a good or enigmatic way. I saw him in The Believer a while ago and I wanted more of that level-headed teenage determination and antagonism, but Leland is, and remains, a disappointing blank.

Back to the Future Part II 8/10 isn't perfect like its prequel but isn't as bad as some people and critics (me included) have said in the past. The characters' unconvincing aging and the lack of Crispin Glover as George McFly are my two biggest irks but they're get-overable and the film is a lot of fun anyway. Thomas F Wilson as Biff and future son Griff is arguably even better than in Part I and has more to do and more priceless lines ("who you calling Butthead, Butthead"). The hoverboard sequences still look ace even though we're now only five years off the actual "Future" of Back to the Future. However, I feel that in lieu of Glover returning as George, more of this film should have been set in the Future, with more sci-fi tropes and conventions being riffed on (just like Western stuff was sent up in Part III) and the "Future" Hill Valley being expanded - you only really see the town square and Marty's house - a future school complete with future Strickland would have been brilliant.

Beautiful Girls 7/10 is a minimumweight drama/comedy consisting of nothing but inconsequential gender-battling and sex talk from 1996 and starring Timothy Hutton, Matt Dillon, Natalie Portman and some other people. Ridiculous actors you haven't seen or heard of for years are in it, like Michael Rapaport, Noah Emmerich, Annabeth Gish, Rosie O'Donnell and David Arquette. This is so 90s. At one remarkably prescient point Portman (character aged 13) says to Hutton, of herself in future years, "I'll be hot."

Mrs Doubtfire 10/10 is the film where you can see Robin Williams touch the outer edges of both ends of his acting talent - at one end crazy-voiced ad-libbing madness and at the other utterly sickening simpering self-righteous mawkishness. If you watch enough Williams films in general, and if you watch this film in particular enough times you may eventually come to appreciate both though I'll admit his syrupy side is an acquired taste that sometimes needs watching through cringing eyes and split fingers. This film has plenty for everyone and I'd recommend it even if I wasn't a Williams aficionado: Pierce Brosnan, pre-bond, is perfect and Sally Field is such a totally hateful stuckup bitch that you get a helping hand onto Williams' side whenever she's on screen. Even the kids are ok. The whole thing builds to an amazing screwball setpiece in a restaurant where Williams has to be both characters at once!

Killer Nun 4/10 is a "nunsploitation" (word not made up by me) film from 1978 which I only watched because I'm going to try and get all 72 of the Video Nasties watched, uncut, before the 30th anniversary of the Video Recordings Act 1984 (it was a UK law which required the censorship or banning of said Nasties). Most of the films on the list are said to have little or no artistic quality but I'm not going to let that stop me. You can have old fashioned sex and violence without artistic quality! Killer Nun has no artistic quality and very little sex and violence. A nun working in a mental institution (Anita Ekberg) gets sick of being a nun and decides to try drugs, sex, alcohol, smoking and violence instead. But she doesn't try very much of any of them, and never seems to enjoy herself. She's not even hot. Don't watch this film.

Night Train Murders 5/10 is another Nasty. You can usually tell by their titles. This one combines sex and violence in a way that would be distressing if it was at all convincing. Also not worth watching though there are some nice shots of 1970s Munich, and the tragi-comical sight of a Santa getting robbed.

Sweet Home Alabama 6/10 is a Reese Witherspoon romcom vehicle from 2002. Josh Lucas stars as Matthew McConaughey (old flame from back home) and "grade-A Hollywood cunt" Patrick Dempsey is the new rich smarmy city fiance. Reese has to go back to Alabama (swamps/civil war/RUN, FORREST!) to get a divorce from Lucas so that she can marry Dempsey in New York and presumably never go back home ever again. Because she hates it down in Alabama, the way they're all so backward (they're not - they like blacks and gays now) and she even hates the way they talk so southern and they're so dirty and have babies now (Melanie Lynskey/bathtub/Kate Winslet/New Zealand!) and they probably all still slap their thighs and holler n hoot and play the fucking banjo. The supposed-to-be-humble house of her parents, which is actually a MASSIVE set (with all the things on one side so the camera can go on the other!), seems even bigger than the Tara-style plantation house she pretended she was living in to her potential mother-in-law, the mayor of New York City. I wouldn't even consider watching this without Reese and (as I knew it would) her charm and likeability kept the whole leaky tub afloat. It's excellent when she gets pissed in the set that's just a bar that's just a shack on the edge of a swamp and the whole town's there and she rages at them for being such country bumpkins. I'd love to have Reese rage at me and me have to bundle her into my pickup and apologise for her to everyone and drive her home because she's too drunk to do so and not take advantage of her even though I could because she's still my wife because I still haven't signed those papers.